Before trying to recall my memory of the past year, I start with some visual sketches about the notion of accumulation. Raindrops accumulate, snows accumulate and leaves accumulate. How objects accumulate and the way they interact with each other fascinate me, the aggregated form gives a different view of what they are as an individual.

To visualize my previous year, I take two attempts, in where I use photos and my locations from home as the contexts.

1.1 Color of life

The first thing came into my mind when asking myself for depicting my past year is the collection of my daily photos, I carry my digital camera everyday and take photos in significant amount that can, in certain extent, represent facets of my life.

Here all the photos I took last year are laid out in extra-exaggerated colors, and they blend with adjacent photos to create a lava-like canvas of colors. By referring the new image to the photo thumbnails, some patterns are revealed. Areas with densely packed colors are where more activities have been taken place and the color also tells roughly of what kind they are, for instance, yellow and red mean indoor, blue and green mean outdoor, black means night time and white means day time.

1.2 Location and activity

Here I present a map capable of showing my location from home and what sort of activities I was doing throughout last year. There are 365 lines pointing out from the center, which is my home, in clockwise direction, and representing the farthest distance I was away from home each day of a year. Weekdays and weekends are marked with different colors to depict my working and playing pattern.

2 Days

10/9/2004 10am - 10/11/2004 10am

2.1 Location and activity

In the above image, a line represents an hour and it is pointing out from the center of my dormitory room. A micro view of my daily activities is visualized using the same notion of the previous yearly depiction.